America Firsthand: Readings from Settlement to Reconstruction

Widely praised for its engaging first-person accounts, America Firsthand gives center stage to ordinary Americans who speak directly of their own lives, capturing through their voices the diverse experiences that constitute the American past and present. This best-selling text invites students to think critically about the past through the voices of the people who made it - from aging Spanish settlers' recollections of pre-Gold Rush life in California to soldiers' accounts of the battle of Pickett's charge at Gettysburg.